Leaving Las Vegas...

I had the alarm on my phone set for 10am, but didn't end up needing it. Our last night in Vegas and it's the worst sleep since we got here. I wake up Jimmie when the alarm goes off and he ends up falling back asleep. No worries. Plenty of time. I pack all my crap up and write the journal for yesterday. I wake Jimmie up again after I finish posting the journal. The laptop had frozen again. This has happened quite a few times when I try to start up MSN. Everything gets sorted and packed and we both shower. We get down to the front desk and check out around quarter to 12. We don't know it at the time, but we missed Eric by just minutes. He checked out closer to noon. Over to the El Cortez to pack up the car, then down to the cafe for our last breakfast. Looks like we're checking out just in time... Everything has gone up by a buck at Careful Kitty's. We'd heard a little about that the other night from one of the night workers. The thought of being cooped up in a car with Jimmie for about 24 hours decides me on what to get for lunch - A Reuben sandwich, loaded with sauerkraut. :) Jimmie, still not feeling well from the night before, goes for a simple bowl of soup. We leave Vegas shortly after 1pm, heading north and west, up towards Reno and the border with California.
The drive through Nevada is fairly uneventful. About the only thing of note was pulling in to that gas station so that I could clean off the windshield. If you took all the bugs that committed suicide on my car in just the previous hour, you'd have about a burger's worth of protein. Speaking of food, the gas station made a wide assortment of fried things, including some tasty chicken and some beef chimichangas that tasted even better. This ended up being the last real food we'd have until getting back to Coquitlam.
We head into California and take this nice, scenic drive that I recognize as being the same way Eric and I came down. Probably should have gassed up before we went in there. The drive through Peter Lassen State Park was very nice. They were doing a controlled burn in the park, and at times, the smoke was as thick as fog. As we were driving, we saw three deer walking around and one uhhh... "sleeping" on the side of the road. The drive seemed never-ending and as it went along I kept an eye on the gas gauge. It was just around the empty line when we passed a mileage sign saying 29 miles to the next town. That's when I informed Jimmie that we probably weren't going to make it to the next town. I had already been nursing the car for quite some time, and now did it even more, throwing it into neutral on the big hills to coast and cut down on the engine use. By the time we pulled in to the gas station, the gas light was one full-time and the needle was below the E. The station was closed (it was after midnight), but it had a pay at the pump feature that came in really handy. I could tell that Jimmie was relieved because he started talking again. After I had told him about the state of the gas tank, he clammed right up, barely saying a word. The rest of the drive through the park and California itself was uneventful. I guess all the stress of almost running out of gas got to Jimmie because he fell asleep before we got to the border of Oregon. He woke up off and on, more off than on, through Oregon and later Washington, waking up long enough to change CDs and when we were at gas stations. By the time we were getting in to Northern Washington, it was getting really hard for me to stay focused on the road and not get hypnotized by the hum of the road. My super-sleep-remover pill that I had been saving for emergencies was used and I found it to be not terribly effective. Meh. That's probably what happens when you let it sit around for over a year. It was enough to keep me going for the rest of the trip though, that and pretty much a gallon of water that I had bought in Nevada. Jimmie woke up by the time we got to Blaine, Washington. Just in time to sit in line at the border for a little over an hour.
We get to the border and the cars are in two lanes. Of course, our lane is moving at about a quarter of the speed as the other lane. I finally cut into the next lane and they both start going at the same speed. Someone must have opened up some of the other booths at the border. Yay. The cars are now in 4 lanes. From where we are, we can go into one of two of them. I let Jimmie choose the lane. Our lane was by far the slowest. Most likely had to do with the completely humorless border guard. We show him our drivers' licenses and he says, "They let you into the States with just your license?" Evidently, Sherlock, we're coming back from there.
On the way back into town, we drove by the Canadian Tire by my place and decided to stop for a smokie from the hot dog vendor outside the store. Felt good to have solid food again. I drive Jimmie up to his parents' house. They had gotten him a new (old) car (a Zephyr) while we were in Vegas. All he had to do was sign all the papers and get the insurance. It's quite the find. Just in time for the new, high gas prices.
I get back to my place around 4pm and hit the sack within an hour. In the next 36 hours or so, I spend close to 24 in bed sleeping. My bed... ahhh... so good. No pain at all getting out of that bed. Not that I wanted to, but I had to work Sunday night.

All in all, I enjoyed my trip to Vegas. It was probably about two days too long, but I'm glad I had the break. I can't wait for my summer vacation. :)

Day Ten - The last full day in Vegas...

People are going to like to read about today even more than yesterday. We did pretty much diddly squat today. After we got up and showered, we just walked back up Fremont Street, with a stop at the Gold Spike for a $2 beer. For the people that haven't been reading and two bucks for a beer sounds a bit much, it's 40oz of beer. We looked at some of the vendors on the street, then went back into the ABC store (from Hawaii), and I bought some macadamia nut snacks in different flavors. There were some spicy ones (or so they said on the package), but they were nowhere near spicy enough. We sat down at La Bayou again and played around on the nickel slots for quite some time. The cocktail waitress kept on feeding me cranberry juices and Jimmie brown cows. His last two though he thinks they made with whisky instead of kahlua, as they were terribly hard to get down. We went from La Bayou to Main Street Station, where I picked up my last dollar coin in Vegas. We wandered around in there for awhile, checking out the restaurants, etc. There was an award winning buffet there, but I just couldn't do it. At the steak house, there was a railway car in it that was set up as the smoking lounge. This is where Jimmie and I parted ways for the evening.
While Jimmie was smoking, I went back out to the casino and tried my hand at a couple of machines. I doubled my money on a poker machine, then got a good pull on a slot machine and made $7.50 in quarters. I went over to the roulette wheel and watched that for awhile. I eventually put in ten bucks and played the outside, going for the almost 50-50 odds of playing red or black. I made 5 bucks right away, then ended up losing it all in three more spins of the wheel. I should have went with my gut though, and put my last five bucks on 0. I decided to go for black again though and that pesky 0 came up. Meh, that's the way it goes.
I left Main Street and slowly wandered back to the hotel, trying to find a place to eat at. I stopped in at Mermaids and got myself a chili dog, but that wasn't quite enough. Eventually, I wandered back to the El Cortez and decided to have their T-Bone steak dinner. Yeah, shouldn't have done that. Quite possibly one of the worst steaks I've ever had. They do their eggs and bacon ok, but that steak... blah.
I came back to the hotel room a little before midnight and chatted with Allan a bit online. MSN decided to flake out and wouldn't let me back on for over 10 minutes so I decided to just watch TV until I was tired enough to sleep. Jimmie got back around 2am, went for breakfast, then back again to drink water and sleep.

Day Nine...

The people that are complaining that my journal is too long and don't want to read it because of that can take heart... today's isn't all that impressive. We didn't do a hell of a lot today.
After we woke up, we sat around the hotel room and watched some TV. When it was getting close to supper time, we got ready and went to the Gold Coast casino. One of Jimmie's friends had recommended that buffet. Seeing as we hadn't done a buffet since we got here, we went to that one. Impressive. It was called Ports 'O Call and had like 5 different styles of food. Southern US - with shrimp (two ways), catfish, jambalaya, etc. Mongolian, Chinese, Mexican, British, and Italian. Hmmm... that's 6. A huge salad bar with leafy salads on one side and pre-made creamy ones on the other side. The dessert part was about as big as some buffet places I've gone to. Many, many different kinds of pies. I was only able to try three (and a cookie) before I was too full to move. By the time we left there, both of us could barely move. We were tempted to go back to the hotel room and sleep it off. But we didn't.
The Frontier had female mud wrestling on at 10pm. We drove over to the Frontier's parking lot and parked (Exciting eh?). That's where we slept. Heheh... it wasn't a matter of choice, our bodies just shut off. I normally can't sleep in the car (unless I'm driving), but I went out like a light. We woke up in plenty of time to go to Gilley's (the country bar). By the time we got there, the place was already full of people and there was no place to sit. We shared a table with these two older ladies (Sharon and Peggy) and waited for 10pm. The cocktail waitresses looked fantastic except they never once stopped and asked if we'd like anything to drink. When it came time for the mud wrestling, a band came on instead. Big Fat Zero - a very descriptive name and quite apt. They sounded like every other rock bar band out there. The only thing that stood out was that they were quite loud. Far too loud for that size of a venue. They seemed to go on forever. The mud wrestling didn't start until 11pm. The mud was nice and it coated the ladies quite nicely. The Miller Lite girl that was doing the round number walk-around, was by far the best looking though. There was this scrappy little thing from Las Vegas that I think should have won, but it went to this other girl from Las Vegas. Oh well. It was entertaining, but I don't think it was quite worth the $10 cover charge. We left the Frontier when Big Fat Zero went back on stage. We weren't the only ones either... 3/4 of the bar cleared out. :) That has to be a real confidence booster for the band members.
We drove down the Strip a little bit and hit the rest of the casinos that we hadn't gone to. None of them really stood out except for the Riviera. Where we went to get the dollar coin, there was a machine that was being played by three people. It turned out to be quite fun. We played it for a bit, getting up some 10-12 bucks, then losing it all again. Oh well, it only cost a buck and we had like 20 minutes of play.
We came back to the El Cortez for breakfast (I don't know where I put it) where I had 7 glasses of water. I was so parched. After breakfast we came back to the room where I added another 7 dollar coins to my collection. Over 40 of them now. I went to sleep first this time as Jimmie watched TV.

Day Eight...

We wanted to make an early start to today, so to that end, I set the alarm on my phone to 10am. I got up when my alarm went off, relieved that all the tossing and turning was over. Someone (starts with "J" and ends with an "immie") slept much longer than that. Poor little cowboy was plumb tuckered out. Our plan for the day was to experience the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. After our showers and a brief chat with Sophie before she went back to Ontario for a couple of months, we were on our way. We decided to skip our normal breakfast at Careful Kitty's so that we could get something at Quark's Bar and Restaurant at the Experience. All I can say about yesterday's weather is that the person that invented the air conditioner should get more money. It was a toasty 34C. Made me really glad I was wearing mostly black.
The inside of the casino had a space station look to it, at least the part that we were in did. There were actors dressed as Klingons, a Borg, and a Ferengi, walking around waiting to get their picture taken. The Klingons and the Ferengi looked pretty good, but the Borg makeup was a bit too noticeable. The poor guy probably walks around all day after his shift with this big red ring around his mouth. There were a few shops down on the Promenade, as well as Quark's. If you've never watched Deep Space Nine, or aren't a fan of Star Trek, all this is probably geek speak to you.
We went through all of the shops and saw all the cool stuff you could buy. It's amazing just how good something will look on TV or in the movies, but in real life how toy-like and craft project it looks. Still though, some of the weapons looked nifty. The shops were staffed by geeks. They're probably still a bit moist from landing those dream jobs. The guy manning the one shop held not one, but two geek degrees. One in Star Trek and the other in Star Wars. Same thing you might say, but not true. Two very separate and distinct universes. That and one happens "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" and the other is a few hundred years into our future. :P
We were both getting a bit hungry, so into Quark's for some tube grubs and blood wine. The menu was much more extensive than that though. We ended up sort of paying tribute to Worf's and Troi's romance in ST:TNG by having the Holy Rings of Betazed for an appetizer, followed by Flaming Ribs of Targ for our main meal. The Holy Rings tasted suspiciously like onion rings. When out server, Lazarus (his real name - still a bit bitter about all the teasing he got as a child), brought out our Targ ribs, he poured some hi-test rum on them, then lit them up. Orange and blue flames licked the ribs for over a minute before he finally put them on the table for us. Targ ribs taste just like bbq baby back ribs drizzled with a peanut/pesto sauce. Quite tasty (and were each time we burped the rest of the day). The drinks that we ordered had fancy names like Jimmie's "Mind Meld" and my "Data's Day", but they only came in regular old drinking glasses. IF you wanted to spend the rest of the day under the table, there was a drink called the "Warp Core Breach" that had 15oz of liquor in it and came in this large fish bowl like glass with some dry ice in it for a bubbling, smoky effect. There was also a "Borg Sphere" that was similar, only green. After my first drink, I ordered a pop in a collectible Borg cup. Lazarus forgot to add it to our bill, which was a good thing because it'd be a shame to pay almost 8 bucks for something that looked like that. Jimmie wasn't able to finish all of his targ, so we packed it up and walked back to the car to drop it off before going on the two rides, Borg Invasion 4D and the Klingon Encounter.
We paid our 30 bucks and walked slowly to the ride area. Along the way were display cases with memorabilia from all the TV series' and the movies. There was also a timeline of the Star Trek universe, chronicalling everything that had happened so far, with birth dates and important events. Right before the gate, there was a great display of Klingon stuff, mostly from DS9, including Worf and Jadzia's wedding clothes, the sword of Kahless and other assorted weapons and bric-a-brac. The ticket seller lady suggested that we go on the Borg Invasion one first (as we'd just eaten and it wasn't all that bouncy), and we're so glad that she did. The live action part of it was a bit hammy, but fun. Jimmie hung to the back of the crowd when we were all being herded from one room to the next, and tried to get himself assimilated. Didn't work. The main part of the ride (if you can call it that), was a 3D show of the Borg attacking a space station and grabbing a bunch of humans. It was great that they had Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew reprising their roles as the Doctor and Janeway. The 3D effects weren't too bad at all. The old guy beside me thought they were even better. He was ducking and cringing every time something came flying at him. The chairs we were sitting in reminded me of the old Sens-surround thing they tried back in the 50's. (Not that I remember it personally, but I read about it.) There were cold blasts of air at our necks every so often, and whenever anything was blown up right in front of us, we were misted with a tiny bit of water. Jimmie didn't feel that because of his pants. When we were assimilated, the chairs behaved like those massage chairs we sat in at the Frontier, only more focused on the ass. Janeway and Voyager came to the rescue, snatched us back from the Borg Queen and tractored us back to the safety of the space station. I'd give it a thumbs up for the visuals, some of the best 3D I've experienced, but the rest of it gets a hearty Meh.
The Klingon Encounter had what the Borg Invasion was missing. We were "transported" to the 24th century by a nasty Klingon named Korath, bent on destroying Captain Picard by killing one of his direct ancestors (being probably two of the only French descended people there, it was obviously either Jimmie or myself). We were ushered on to a recreation of the Enterprise bridge, and we had a little explanation of what had happened from Jonathan Frakes and Levar Burton (reprising their roles as Riker and LaForge) on the main screen. We were suddenly attacked by Korath, so had to be evacuated by a shuttle craft. Our turbo-lift failed and started free-falling. We finally get to the shuttle bay and are ushered into a shuttle craft. Jimmie and I lucked out by being last out of the bridge, so first onto the shuttle. Front row baby. We strap in and the whole shuttle rocks and banks, bucks and bumps, all while following a weaving flight, trying to evade enemy fire. You could see the lines on the inside of the dome that the movie was being projected onto, but still, not too shabby. We're brought back to our time through a temporal rift and deposited back where we started.
Now then... if they could combine the two rides, taking the great 3D from the Borg one and the bouncing good time of the Klingon one, make it about twice as long, then you'd have an awesome experience. One of my suggestions would to also place a plant in the audience (not like a tree) and have one of the Borg or Klingons pull them out and beat the crap out of them. It would heighten the realism.
When we left there, Jimmie was feeling a bit worn out (tired buckaroo) and I was feeling the effects of a night of tossing, so we went back to the hotel for a nap. I was napped out by a little after 9, and ended up sending Allice a bunch of messages with my phone. When Jimmie woke up, we decided to go to a movie. Finding a late-night movie theatre was a bit of a chore, but Jimmie did it.
We went over to the Gold Spike for a beer and some pie, then headed on down the Strip to try to find the theatre. It really would have helped if *any* of the buildings on the Strip put their damn address numbers on them. We popped into the Paris casino so that Jimmie could hit the washroom and to get our bearings. We find out we're only 3 blocks away. We park in the Boardwalk casino's parking garage, then walked up the street to the theatre. Just one problem. It ended up being on the other side of the Strip, across like 8 lanes of traffic. We get to the place just in time for the movie to start. I finally get to use my "student card" and get a $2 discount. Jimmie forgot his at the hotel room. Hehehe... The Punisher was a lot better than the original.
On the way back to the car, we walked down one side of the Strip stopping in at all of the casinos that we hadn't already been in, getting my dollar coins and some great pictures at the Monte Carlo. The sun was just about to come up, so we headed out to the end of the Strip and got some pics of the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. We drove back to the El Cortez for breakfast and Careful Kitty's was closed for cleaning. Gah! Back to the hotel for sleepy time.

Day Seven...

We skipped our normal "breakfast" at the El Cortez this morning when we got up. Instead, we decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. We ate VEGETABLES! I had a caesar salad that was simply amazing, and a hickory bacon burger that was simply ok. Jimmie seemed to enjoy his oriental chicken salad, 'cause he literally cleaned his plate. We walked across the parking lot to the casino and wandered around there for a little bit. It was great seeing all of the memorabilia. There were two large display windows that had nothing but dolls of past and present stars, their lunch kits, chewing gum, shampoo, etc. The felts on the gaming tables looked kind of funky too. There weren't any other casinos in the area, so we decided to hop in the car and head on over to the Venetian.
The Venetian was quite elegant and obviously catered to an upscale clientele. Case in point: When we walked in, we were approached by this lady that worked for the casino. She offered us free show tickets and buffet dinners, all we had to do was take a two hour tour of another hotel. Sure, we could do that. She asked us repeatedly if we were single. It was getting to the point where I was going to say that no, we were actually a couple. We were all ready to sign on the dotted line when the "one minor stipulation" reared its ugly head. She asked if we made 120000 a year. Yes, one hundred and twenty thoooooousand. Now, I can see how she might have been confused by my appearance. My faded black shorts and 7 year old sandals were obviously a clever disguise to hide my vast disposable wealth. Jimmie actually looked the part with his new leather jacket and spiffy sunglasses tucked into his shirt collar. We should have lied and got a free show.
There were gondola rides with singing gondoliers. The acoustics of where the "canal" was made it quite good. The canal ran from outside at the front of the hotel to the inside where the shops were. The decorations around the hotel and casino were quite beautiful. Hopefully the pictures turn out good enough to post to a website when we get back.
We wandered around the place looking for the lounge that Inez said the band was going to be playing in. According to the directory, there were two lounges in the place. We went to the smaller of the two, the Venus Lounge, first because Inez said that the place was small. Turns out that wasn't it. As we're walking to the larger of the venues, we pass a bar called La Scena (or something similar) that has a stage. It was even smaller than I had imagined. The dance floor was maybe a quarter of the size of the Coral Reef's and there was barely any room to move on the stage with everyone up there. They changed their music lineup a bit to accommodate the different crowd. More softer, more Latin. At least in the set that we listened to. They did rock out a couple of times though (dedicating yet another song to us, her Canadian friends). At the end of their last set, they had to break all their gear down and store it. There was a another band coming up after them. It's got to be a supreme pain in the ass to have to break down and set up every day at the same venue for an entire week. Jimmie talked to Inez after the show for a bit and she said that the Venetian doesn't allow the band to fraternize with the customers. Totally sucks. The band finished packing up their stuff and the other band set theirs up. Their female singer looked fairly hot too. A tanned blonde with large boobs. I wanted to hear what they sounded like (and watch the girl). As I watched them set up though, it appeared that everything about her was fake. Fake boobs, the tan looked spray on, bleached hair. Nice dress but the shoes she was wearing didn't go with it. They set up a fan on stage and I thought that it'd be for blowing her long golden hair around to make her look sexier. No, it was for cooling down the sweaty lead singer. They were ok, but the lead singer guy seemed to be trying too hard, throwing attempts at comedy in with the songs. Blondie was using over-expressive facial expressions, like she was acting in play for kids. At this point, she really reminded me of a girl I used to work with back in Kitchener, Kathy Preissler (rhymes with Chrysler). Just as plastic-looking, only Kathy's boobs were real. The other members of the band could have been cardboard cutouts they had so little personality. Ok. We did only give them about 5 songs to impress us. Maybe they got better after that. We'll never know.
We wandered around the Venetian some more, stopping at a bar called China Bar so that Jimmie could get a Guinness on tap. It was lacking. It didn't have the "gulp lines" on the glass as you drank it, felt watered down, the head was minimal, and there was no cascade effect. I don't drink and even I know that isn't right. After he finished his pint, we found our way to the street and continued our journey up the Strip.
The next casino up the Strip was Casino Royale (with cheese). Not much to say about this one. In fact, beyond me getting my dollar coin from them, I can't remember a single thing. If you've been reading all of the journal entries so far (congratulations btw - some people can't be bothered to sit each day and read for a few minutes), you'll know that I usually have some details about the places I've been. Casino Royale... nothing.
We stepped into Harrah's and walked through it. They had an outdoor lounge that had a live band in it. Their music ranged from Eminem to House of Pain. They were able to pull off decent covers. The speakers for the lounge ran all the way outside to the front of the casino. We cut through a back alley to try to get to the Imperial Palace. The first way we tried smelled like hot dogs - that was nice. Unfortunately, there wasn't a pedestrian exit that way. We went the other way and it too smelled like hot dogs... many hours after you've eaten them. This town sure does have some foul smells.
The Imperial Palace was kind of neat. We walked into it just as the Legends Alive concert was letting out and were almost trampled by the herd. We saw some of the performers waiting to sign autographs right beside where we were standing. The Ray Charles looked great although he "looked" too much. He flipped through the Souvenir Program (if I never hear those two words again I'll be happy) to get to his picture to sign it. The real Ray would have scribbled on your arm or the table beside the book and said, "next!" The Beatles were sub-beatle, a little too much makeup. I guess you could call them the Fib Four. We walked through the casino (after we finally figured out how to get there) and saw the advertised "Dealertainers". These were blackjack dealers that were dressed like famous people. There was a Dolly Parton, an Elvis (young and gold jacket - not fat and bejewelled bodysuit), and a couple others that aren't coming to mind now (or I couldn't figure out who they were supposed to be).
By now, my dogs were barking. It felt like my feet were going to fall off at the ankles and my lower back was threatening to go on strike. A brief sit-down in the Keno pit at the Imperial Palace helped (my back cracked from top to bottom when I sat down), but didn't end the intermittent back spasms I was getting. We just had one more casino to go before we called it a night and walked back to the car parked at the Venetian. We were going to go into O'Shea's casino so that Jimmie could have a Guinness done right. He was riding the wave of disappointment from the other two he'd had from the previous bars so didn't end up ordering one. I got my dollar coin and we left. The felts on these tables looked fairly neat too. They had a mossy green look.
The walk back to the Venetian didn't take as long as I had anticipated. Before we knew it, we were back in the car and driving back to the El Cortez. We finished out our day with a hearty breakfast, successfully killing yet another bottle of tabasco in the process. This one was hard though... it was three quarters full when we started. :) When we got back to the room, Jimmie wasn't tired. The triple espresso he had when we were at the Venetian was still affecting him (the piece of New York style cheesecake I had there was awesome - huge too, easily twice the size of other places), and he flipped through the channels on the TV in our room, finally stopping on A Man Called Trinity (or one of the sequels). We ended up watching that for almost an hour before I heard him drop off a couple of times. An early night... asleep by 4ish.

Day Six...

What a great day. A day of firsts for both myself and Jimmie. More on that later...
We started off our day with a good meal. I haven't had so much bacon and eggs in such a short span of time as since we've been here, but the price is right and it's quite tasty. While we were eating breakfast, this guy kept on getting paged for a seat in the poker room. Each time he got paged, the guy doing it was getting more and more pissed off and you could hear it in his voice. :) After three calls, there was an open seat for anyone at the poker table. Heh. Today was a basically a local exploration day. After breakfast, we walked down towards the Fremont Street Experience so I could get my dollar coins from the casinos down there. We stopped in all of the ones along that stretch, down one side and up the other. Not too many of them stood out though and if you asked me details, I'd be hard pressed to give you any on most of them. There were a few exceptions though...
La Bayou. La Bayou is a tiny little casino tucked in at the end of a much larger one. It looks to be just a single large room with a bar and cashier at the back, but the waitresses were super friendly and always there with a refresh for your drink. It had a Louisiana/Cajun theme to it, which really worked for such a small venue. There was Zaideco (sp?) music playing in the background which was very nice. The hostess of the joint (she had a mic on and was calling out the names of the winners, etc.) came over to us and watched us play on a couple of Jackpot Party machines (Jimmie's first time gambling while in Vegas), but as Jimmie noted, she seemed to be a "cooler". Whenever she came close to us, we couldn't get a break. At the end of it all, I ended up going through quite a few bucks in there. I tried playing that $20 my mom wanted me to play on the machines she wins her money on. Yeah. I won too... if you count giving my $20 bill winning. :) Well, I guess I did win. That was 20 bucks less that would weigh me down as we walked around.
Binion's Horseshoe was another one that stood out. Not so much for the beauty of it ('cause it wasn't), but because that was where the World Series of Poker was being played. We had hoped to find Eric in there, but with how many people were at the tables, it was like looking for a needle in a needle factory. When we were back at the hotel room, I went online and ended up chatting with one of Eric's friends that I had met the last time I came down to Vegas. He mentioned that Eric would most likely be at Sam's Town playing some Deuces Wild poker machines as they paid out something like 100.78%. I know, it's like getting almost a full penny for every buck, but it means a profit if you know how to play poker. We'll see about going there in the next couple of days. He also told me that he heard that Binion's had been shut down by the feds for some tricky business and that Harrah's had taken it over. That would explain why I was only able to get Harrah's dollars out of the machines there.
As we continued our walk, we ended up by the Glitter Gulch. It was no longer a casino, but a bar with topless dancers. Free cover, hey, what a good idea! Beware the two drink minimum. The girl sat us at a table and we ordered our two drinks, Jimmie his two brown cows and me two cranberry juices. These were the most expensive glasses of juice that I've ever paid for. Yes, the cranberry juice was some of the tastiest that I'd had since coming here, but $8.25US a glass was a bit steep. As we were sitting there drinking (slowly) these drinks that must have been made by a master tender of the bar (due to the price), a dancer named Jenna came over and started to talk to us. She said she couldn't decide which one of us was cuter, blah, blah, blah. It was hard to concentrate on what she was saying because her boobies were quite large and threatening to fall out of the bra she was wearing. She asked several times if either of us wanted to go with her into one of the corner booths to "play" for awhile. Hmmm... Play. This is Vegas, that could mean many different things. She eventually moved on to find other prey. A little while later, this gorgeous brunette came over and talk to us. She didn't beat around the bush, she came out and asked if one of us would like a private dance. When I asked what it would entail, she rubbed her boobs all over my face then said, "This, only without my top." Sold! :) We went over to one of the darker corners and we talked for a bit before the next song started so I could get the benefit of a full song. I found out she was from a small town in Alabama. The next song started and it was time to get down to business. Now, let me explain things to those of you that don't know me, and to some of those that do. This is completely uncharacteristic for me and have never done anything like this before. I haven't even been in a strip club since 1988 (except for accidentally seeing those male strippers back in Ontario - but that's another story). Jimmie pointed out that this technically wasn't a strip club, but a club featuring topless dancers - no stripping involved. A minor point, but one I'm going to stick to. :) Back to my lapdance... It was awesome. It was like I had died and had gone to boobie heaven. I'm so glad that I'm near-sighted. Without my glasses everything was still in crystal clear view. Ahhh... To top things off, she smelled really good. I lucked out too. We were there at the beginning of her shift so she hadn't been rubbing up against a ton of other guys before me. Everyone after me though... they have Mark cooties. :P I also lucked out in another way... it was a fairly long song. :) I found out later that her name was Marie. I'd have to give my very first lapdance experience an enthusiastic three thumbs up. We stayed and watched more dancers go up on the center stage and dance around, shaking their money makers. One in particular stood out, a dancer called Nadia. She was a dark-haired Goth chick with glasses and had an awesome tattoo on her belly. Without exception, every single one of the dancers had really nice bums. :) Jimmie went to the washroom while we were there and he was gone for quite a long time. When he came back, he told me that someone had thrown up over all of the urinals and all three stalls in the bathroom. He spent 20 minutes cleaning up a spot where he could go without getting all over himself. We both agreed it was probably the large white guy that had staggered in there about an hour and a half earlier, then spent the next hour in the washroom. We finally left the boobies... uhhh.. dancers, and continued our walk down the road. I didn't want to go - boobies don't come visit me very often in my life - but it was time to move on.
We were able to witness the Fremont street experience again, and it was much better this time. The music was funky and rocking. We perused all the little booths set up under the lights and tried to find souvenirs to buy. We stopped at another casino called Mermaids. Jimmie sat down at another Jackpot Party machine and I went to the john. He ordered a drink and she ended up bringing him two. She looked like she was having fun doing her job too. I like to see that. Seeing as it had been a long time since breakfast, I bought myself a foot-long "Coney Dog" - basically a chili-cheese dog. Tasty. I sat down with Jimmie and threw some more money away. Was it ever hot where we were sitting. For his day of gambling, Jimmie pretty much broke even, what with tipping the waitresses and all. Me. Let's not talk about how I did.
We were planning on coming back to the hotel to freshen up, then go to the Hard Rock Cafe for something to eat. After that, we were going to go back to Mandalay Bay to check out what Inez was wearing tonight. Oh, and to listen to the band. Just as we were going to leave, I looked at the little flyer/advert for the Hard Rock and we found that it closed at 11pm. It being almost midnight, I don't think we could have snuck in. We decided to just go catch Joy Ride. What a good idea.
Even though we've only seen them like 4 times, three of those times we've walked in and they've been doing "Get this party started" by Pink. Odd. There weren't as many good dancers this time around, but there sure were some interesting ones. Jean Claude Van Dancer, who danced like... it's kind of hard to describe. His ass rotated like... a wrecking ball. His girlfriend danced normally and he gyrated around her like a coke-fueled maniac. Then there was Freaky Funky Dancer Man. He liked Jimmie. He spent probably two songs worth of "dancing", doing it just for Jimmie. Staring at him. He was dressed like a reject from clown school and danced like a wind-up toy. He'd walk away and your hopes would soar, then he'd walk back and start it all over again. It wouldn't have been so bad, but he was blocking our view of Inez... uhh.. the band. Speaking of Inez, she looked particularly hot tonight. She had this Moulin Rouge look going for her, with a silver bustier and a short black leather skirt. Her nice long curly brown hair flowed down her back. She looked like a not-so-skanky version of Christina Aguleluuerra (you know who she is - I think there's an I in there somewhere), only with dark hair. When she saw us sit down, she gave a wave. The band seemed to be having a great time up there on stage. When they came back for their last set, this trombone player named Steve joined them. Now, I'm sure everyone has heard songs with a trombone being played well in it. This was not the case tonight. Steve's timing left a lot to be desired. He overpowered a few of the solos and didn't quite take the hints and cues from the rest of the band. He had this obscenely long solo during Guantanamera that made the rest of the band look at him like he was on crack. What was kind of funny was that Carlos the bassist was making a joke about them playing some Latin music and Steve ended up coming back on stage. After that song, The band leader, the congo player, said to Steve as he was leaving the stage again, "Hey Steve, we've got one more song." When Steve turned around and came back up, the congo player bent over and twisted around to control his laughter. Jimmie thinks it looked like he was pantomiming the fact that Steve sounded like he was blowing it out of his ass. Inez dedicated a song (No Doubt - It's My Life) to us, her Canadian friends. That sure was nice. I've never had a song dedicated to me before. Their very last song turned out to be Happy Birthday to a girl (Tara) in the audience. When they started playing, she got up and started to dance all by herself. Hmmm... dance. We saw dancing like this earlier on today at the Glitter Gulch. We're pretty sure that she "works" for a living as she put on quite a show. In fact, I've never heard Happy Birthday go on that long. The band was quite in to it, especially Carlos. The lead guitar player even stepped to the front of the stage from the back corner, just to get a better view. She was hot and very good at what she was doing. Fortunately, Jimmie got pictures. When that ended, it was the end of the set. It also turned out to be their last gig at Mandalay Bay for another week. They opened tomorrow at the Venetian for an early show. We talked to the congo player for a bit, then cute little Inez. She gave us both hugs and invited us to see them at the Venetian. I don't think she likes it as much there because it's a bit smaller. Shook the lead guitarist's hand after the show and we joked around about their last song and the dance Tara did for everyone.
Our day ended just like it began, at Careful Kitty's Cafe at the El Cortez, staring at a plate of eggs, bacon and hash browns. We really have to eat some vegetables soon. :) Jimmie killed his third bottle of tabasco sauce while eating at the cafe, the second being this morning for breakfast. After we ate, we came back to the room to check our bank balances. Earlier on in the day, I had taken money out and it showed that I only have 600-odd dollars left in my bank account. That wasn't nice. It turned out to be some kind of translating error between the banks or something.

Day Five...

Today was a lot more busy than yesterday. We spent a little time in the morning putting together an agenda of things to do and see, pretty much all free. While I was getting ready, Jimmie went over to the Gold Spike for a $2 beer.
We drove to Treasure Island and parked there. We were going to see the "Sirens of TI" show later on in the evening, then from there to the Rio... So, we parked at Treasure Island to begin walking up the Strip towards Caesar's Palace. The inside of Treasure Island is large and rather confusing to get around in. Finding the exit to the Strip was fun. Ask the staff - they know everything. From Treasure Island we went over to the Mirage. I can't remember much about the actual casino, but there was Siegfried and Roy stuff everywhere. There was a tiger habitat where there was a single white lion walking around. It looked fairly bored and kept trying to scratch itself under its chin by rubbing up against the wall. Not in some psychotic way (if you've been to some zoos, you know what I mean), it just looked like it really wanted someone to come in and scratch it. Then it would eat them. :) It was rather beautiful, but we didn't get a picture of it. By the time the camera had come out and powered up, it had moved up to a hidden spot, out of the public eye. That was ok. We were about to go somewhere awesome.
Caesar's Palace is amazing. Opulence pretty much describes it. I don't think there is an undecorated wall, ceiling, floor, etc., in that place. The Roman theme is very well done. Coming in from the walkway from the street, we were greeted by a huge fountain/statue of Jupiter (Zeus to the Greeks), surrounded by other Roman gods. Of course, the best photo shot of it has to overlook the restaurant at its base. The ceiling was painted sky blue, with fluffy white clouds. The lighting and colors made it look like it really was the sky (except for the circular spots every so often). The Shops at the Forum are quite fashionable and quite pricey. Just watching some of the people walking around there was like watching a fashion show. I felt a little under-dressed with my Hawaiian shorts/shirt combo (which strangely worked very well at Treasure Island). For those of you that know Vancouver, think Robson Street, only fancier. We got many pictures of statues and the general decor around the hotel/casino. Seeing as we hadn't eaten all day, we checked out a food court in the Forum. The food was a tad over-priced for what it was (a burger), but tasty just the same. The staff there were quite helpful too. (My cashier - you paid as you left - was this gorgeous black girl that was *very* friendly. Yum!) We went into an art gallery in the Forum that had some beautiful paintings and sculptures. If I would have had a spare 10-15 grand I would have bought some. One. Most of one. As we were walking around to find the exit (an ongoing problem for us), we came across this huuuuuge slot machine and I was going to put some money in it and give it a pull. I couldn't though. This lady had already won an obscene amount of money on it and was waiting for an attendant to pay her out. The same thing happened at the other big-ass slot machine we saw at the exit, only to a different lady. Not as much money this time, but still enough that they were still playing.
We decided to head over to the Bellagio and check out the water fountain show. After Caesar's Palace, it seemed rather drab in comparison. We made our way out to the water fountain around 7:10pm, right after one show had ended. They were supposed to be going every 15 minutes, so we found a good spot and waited. And waited... and waited. While we were waiting, we talked to this couple from South Carolina. They had gone to see Celine Dion the night before. Don't know how the show was as they never made any mention of it beyond that they had seen it. The fountain show finally started and it was spectacular. They choreographed the moving water jets to music and had the water streaming up and around, waving all about. Quite pretty. During the uptempo parts of the songs, the center spouts would fire and at times, they could shoot the water up into the air some 250 feet. Quite impressive. It's a bit hard to describe. We ended up staying for a second show because we had been chatting with that couple after the first one had ended.
We hustled our butts over to the Mirage in order to catch the volcano eruption. The smell of chlorine in the air from the water falls in front of the Mirage was so strong that it was difficult for me to breathe (getting over a cold) and both of our eyes stung like the dickens. (What the hell are "the dickens" anyhow?) I checked the guide book and saw that the Sirens of TI show was going to start 10 minutes from then. That show is only every hour and a half whereas the volcano erupts every 15 minutes. We start walking towards Treasure Island and then we see the crowd of people milling about, waiting for the show. We push our way into the crowd, following a line of people that are doing the same. We end up getting pushed and shoved and manhandled (well, it was a woman, but she did grab Jimmie's unit). We were packed so tightly on that sidewalk area that it was like cows in a cattle truck headed for slaughter. We did get a fairly decent viewing spot though. At least Jimmie did. I had a sign that said "Wet Zone" blocking most of my view. The show was ok, but a little racy for the large amount of children in the audience. Heh. What am I saying? Kids can find porn just lying in the street (we added quite a few new cards today to our collection of porn). Even though the sun had long since gone down, the heat, while standing in the herd, was next to unbearable for me. Sweat was literally dripping down my back. That and my secret no-no place. We fought our way out of the crowd and up to the parking garage. Ok, let me clarify. We only had to fight our way out of the crowd. No fighting was done in the casino or the parking garage. Well, there was the constant struggle to keep walking when your feet don't want any more abuse, but no heated battles. We've been lucking out lately and getting fantastic parking spots, literally the stall right beside the elevator to the casino.
We checked the time and decided to head over to the Rio for their Masquerade in the Sky show. Due to traffic, we just barely make it there and parked (no luck this time) before it starts up. Hmmm... How can I describe it? In the vast lexicon of the English language, there must be some few words that can help me to describe the Masquerade Show in the Sky. Ahhh yes... Lame. The best part was when the showgirls came out at the end and danced around a bit. It was kind of fun to watch grown men and women fight over these cheap plastic bead necklaces that were being thrown by the performers in the floats. After all the floats had been put back to bed for the next performance, and the showgirls had taken their feathered asses (and heads) elsewhere, the bartenders at that big round bar put on a performance. Much much cooler than the other one that shall remain nameless from here on in. They did juggling of bottles of booze (4 bottles each), tricks with pouring, etc. Very entertaining. The digital camera's battery died while we were there. We took a lot of pictures since we came down, but nowhere near the lifespan of one of these batteries. Not only that, we haven't been using the flash much, or reviewing the pics. Going to have to go in to Staples and give them a piece of my mind when I get home (the battery that I bought was in a previously opened package). Jimmie wasn't feeling well when we left there, so we decided to come back to the hotel. Another long day ended.

Day Four...

I spent the first few hours of my day trying to get AOL to install properly and cleaning out my laptop to make more room for it. Bah. Even though I can get online now, it's still a beast and sometimes hangs when I try to load it up. Still... I guess it's better than nothing. To dial out from our room locally, it costs 50 cents a call. Just to get online and post the journal so far cost a buck 50. Blah. Hopefully it's all sorted out now though. While Jimmie was waiting, he went over to the Gold Spike and bought himself a $2 beer. :) He came back to the room to drink it and fell asleep waiting for me to finish up things on the laptop. Lucky bastard.
We ended up spending most of the day in the room, alternately napping and playing around on the computer. We each got caught up in our mail and sent off messages to everyone (except for those few that we didn't have their email addresses). We didn't end up going outside until around 8pm. We walked over to the El Cortez for some breakfast (hehehe), over to the Golden Spike for some pie, then headed out on our big adventure for the day. Our plan was to go to Death Valley and look at the stars. We had seen online that the Lyrid meteor shower was going on and even though we missed the peak yesterday, there should still be a little bit to see. The drive there was pretty much uneventful. The moon sure was nice though. It was a small sliver and with the clear night sky, stood out very well. We watched it slowly set as we drove, eventually seeing it go down behind a mountain in what looked like a firey crash. We didn't realize there was a $10 admission to Death Valley National Park, but fortunately they had a credit card accepting ticket dispenser there. Yep, it's good to know that in the middle of the great outdoors, they still take Visa. We stopped at Furnace Creek to look at the nice looking hotel there. There was a private function going on, so we didn't go in - just snapped some pics from the outside and ran. Well, not so much ran as walked casually back to the car. Our goal for this trip was Bad Water. That makes no sense. The place where we were headed to in Death Valley is called Bad Water. We were originally going to take West Side Road to get there off of the main highway, but it turned out to be a dirt road (which kinda makes sense now that I think of it). In the half a kilometer that we drove on it, we went over enough washboard to wash all the clothes ever made since the beginning of time. Deciding not to shake the car to pieces and be stranded literally in the Shadow of the Valley of Death, we turned around and used the paved route. Bad Water's the lowest point in North America at some 280+ feet below sea level. And it smells funky. There's a huge salt flat there that gets flooded every so often, then the water evaporates leaving the salt to form cool looking crystalline shapes on the ground. And it smells funky. We walked out on the salt flat, which was still a bit damp (and funky smelling), then walked back to the wooden deck-like thing. No, we didn't hop the fence in blatant disregard of the "Don't walk on this shit" sign, the deck just dipped down to the flat without a fence or anything, literally inviting you to walk on it. I wonder if that's how they collect fines in the park... We took one of the bed coverings from the hotel with us and spread it down on the deck for us to lay down on and look at the stars. It was all very romantic but Jimmie's missing a couple of things I like in a woman. We lay there for well over an hour, looking at the vastness of space and several shooting stars. There were alternating warm and cool breezes blowing in off the salt flat. The warm ones made me glad I wore shorts and the cool ones making me feel stupid. Jimmie didn't mind so much as he was dressed properly and I was acting like a wind-break for him. Everything was awesome... well, awesome until it was time for me to stand up. Laying on cool wooden planks was all the go ahead my lower back needed to seize up. Took me a good five minutes to get into the standing position. While I was doing this, Jimmie walked out on the salt flat again. He said that when he was walking it didn't feel like he was moving at all. No, he hadn't taken any mind-altering drugs, it was just that the featureless grey-white of the salt flat combined with the midnight blue of the sky didn't give you any references to show you that you had moved. I tried it myself, it was pretty cool. When I was on the deck and Jimmie was walking back in, it looked just as if he was walking on water. Quite the optical effect. And funky smelling. I walked off my stiff back soon enough and we were on our way back to Vegas. Before we got into the car, we tried out a few echos in the valley. My rendition of "Guantanamera" was next to perfect. Perfectly awful that is, even the echo didn't like it. Oh yeah, one more thing about Bad Water... we both added some "bad water" of our own. :P
We saw quite a bit of wildlife on the drive to and from Death Valley, and not just the freaks and zombies walking around Vegas. What looked like a chinchilla ran in front of us and almost became a present for one of our loyal readers. Countless mice ran across the road in front of my car. It almost seemed like it was a game to them. I'm pretty sure one lost though. I didn't feel a bump, but then again, my car is very big and heavy and the mouse was pretty much mouse-sized. We saw several bats (a couple which really freaked Jimmie out when we were laying on the deck); what looked like an owl hunting for those tricky mice on the road, and a pair of eyes up in the rocks at the side of the road. From the size of them, possibly a coyote. Two hares also became hood ornaments. The first of which also freaked Jimmie out. Like a good travelling companion, he promptly fell asleep after leaving Badwater. :) When I quick braked and swerved out of the way of the dumb bunny, he woke up rather quickly.
The drive back to Vegas was again mostly uneventful, with a few exceptions. During one very long and boring straight stretch of the highway, I decided to test the upper limits of my car. I got it up to just over 180 km/h. Not quite sure if that was the top top speed, but it was close enough. Don't worry mom, if we would have gotten into an accident, I was wearing clean underwear. :) From over 60 miles out we could see the beam of light that shoots out of the top of the Luxor. Vegas itself caused the whole sky to be lit up like dawn, but Luxor's beam could be seen over and above that.
Our route brought us back into Las Vegas at the very end of the Strip. We saw four cuties taking pictures at 5am at the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign (we gotta do that - cuties that is). This was the best wildlife that we had seen in our 500+ km journey. As we drove along the Strip, we could see teams of two workers picking up all the scattered porn that gets handed out by shifty looking people. If you've ever been here, you'll know what we're talking about. If you haven't, let us know and we'll show you pictures of our massive porn collection... uhhh... I mean... colorful local art. If they didn't clean up this crap on a daily basis, Vegas would soon be buried under a heap of playing card-sized porn... Wait. It already has.
We ended our journey where it began, at the El Cortez coffee shop. We missed out on the super cheap breakfast special by like 25 minutes, but $1.75 for eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast isn't too bad either. Jimmie fell asleep soon after we got back to the hotel. Yet another morning coming home just as the sun is coming up. If we keep this up, I won't have to work too hard at getting back into my work schedule when the vacation is over. Work. Blah.

Day Three...

We slept until 12:30 in the afternoon. Man, do I ever like thick curtains that block out that evil, evil sunlight. Jimmie had a hangover. He had a bath and I started to write. We *really* have to pick up an AOL CD soon so that we can get online.
What luck! On our way out the door of the hotel, there was an AOL CD sitting on the table beside all the local weekly papers. Into the backpack it went for later.
The first thing we did today was walk through the El Cortez in search of Eric. I have no idea where he's going to be, or even if he gambles in that casino. We did find out his room number though (290), although getting ahold of him is going to be tricky. He doesn't come back much to his room (from what I remember), except to sleep, shower and change. While coming back through the back entrance of the casino, I noticed that an old man playing slots was at the same machine he was on this morning. That's an eight & half hour shift so far and who knows how long he'd been there before Mark and I passed though at four am. I made a comment under my breath ~ Mark heard and responded with his observation of the two guys sitting in the staged lounge. They'd been in the same spot as well. Both folding their arms and taking long blinks; statues. Afterwards, in one of our many many elevator trips, we laughed when the subject was brought up again. "They are the decor of El Cortez..." I wonder if they're still sitting there, right now?
After the fruitless search, we drove to the Hotel San Remo where we were going to buy tickets for a cabaret show called "The Showgirls of Magic." The ticket seller had just gone on break and wouldn't be back for over an hour, so we decided to take a walk over to the Excalibur casino so I could get rid of my extra dollar coins from there. We pass a roulette table and I decided to place a bet with the coins instead of cashing them in. Allice wanted me to bet on 15 black, so I did that... and black... and odd, and a range. If it would have come up, it would have paid off nicely. If. :) Unfortunately, it was red, even and in the wrong range. Oh well. We were both getting a little peckish, and there was a dinner show at Excalibur called "The Tournament of Kings." It was a bit pricey, but that's why we came - to be entertained. The show started almost immediately, so we headed off to find our seats. Fairly good spot, almost in line with dead center of the arena, second row up. Our section was cheering for the King of Russia, who didn't quite live up to the standards of nobility and honor that he was supposed to have as a knight in Arthur's court, but he sure could work the crowd. Our dinner companions were a little less than wanted too. On Jimmie's right were an older couple. The man insisted Jimmie was in his seat at first until he read the numbers on the chair arms. The woman that sat directly beside him had a slight problem with personal hygiene. I'll have to explain something first... the meal is to be eaten with just your hands - no forks, knives or spoons. The woman wiped her nose repeatedly and with bits of stuck to her fingers, dug into her cornish game hen. Nummy! I had a family of four sitting on my left. The wife was the stereotypical rude American. She goes off on the guy serving the drinks when he says that he doesn't take the drink orders, but that the guy from the bar would be there shortly. After he leaves, in a loud voice, she expresses her displeasure over the service she's getting and that she wants a new waiter, like the guy over there that's getting his drinks served to him. Within a few minutes, I was ready to throttle her. Bah. The drink guy eventually came to our section and she got her drink. I tried to ignore her after that, but noticed that pretty much her entire family barely touched any of their food. Too good to use their fingers to eat? Who knows. Jimmie and I did a really good job on our birds... nothing but bones and cartilage left when we were done.
The show itself was fairly good. Jimmie wanted it to be a bit darker, with blood and dismemberment, but it was a family show. Bah. I'm with Jimmie on that. The hand to hand combat and jousting were good. They looked like if they were off by a second or two, they would have gotten seriously hurt. There were sparks flying from the swords as they struck each other. Fairly well choreographed. The acrobat/tumblers were pretty damn good. One of the "maidens" was super hot too. By the end of the show, I had to go to the washroom something fierce. I don't know what it is about this trip, but I've been dropping bombs and had more gas than any other single time in my life. Hehehe... I know you wanted to know.
We walked back to the San Remo and were just in time to catch the "Showgirls of Magic." The ticket printing machine wasn't working, so the guy walked us in. Just as we took our seats in this dark, close little room, the girls came out on stage and introduced themselves. Very, very nice. They were all dressed in skimpy little outfits and worked the crowd very well. The diner number they did was fantastic. I didn't care that I saw through half of the magic tricks... they were barely dressed and topless about half the time. There was an intermission with a huge drag queen that pretended to be Cher. Of course, there was a midget playing Sonny Bono and they sang "I got you babe." The comedian that was on during the half-time show was awesome. My face hurt from laughing so much. He pulled four guys from the audience and sat them down onstage. He put masks on them and asked them to do certain things whenever he tapped them on the shoulder. It doesn't sound like much, but it was very, very funny. There were some levitation tricks, the swords into a basket trick, the cutting a girl into little bits trick and lots of boobies. Mmmmm... boobies. After the show, both Jimmie and I got our pictures taken with the showgirls. It cost 5 bucks, but it was well worth it. :)
We left the San Remo after sitting in the parking lot for about 15 minutes, trying to figure out what else to do. We decided to catch the free show at Caesar's Palace (some battle for Atlantis or something), then go over to the Mirage for the volcano eruption. That was the plan anyhow. We turned down the street where Caesar's parking *should* have been, only there was some construction and that area was blocked off. We ended up crossing an overpass and went to the Rio instead. What a nice casino. Very party-like with an open concept main area. You could walk along a balcony and look out over the slots area of the casino. There was also a large round bar there where the bartenders did tricks with the bottles and drinks. Lots of hot chicks walking around the casino too. Jimmie watched some people playing roulette for a little while and some of them were winning big.
We went back to the Mandalay Bay to end our night listening to the awesome live music of Joy Ride. We found a table fairly quickly and well-placed. It pays to go every night because they added a few different songs to their sets. That and the lead singer (the beautiful Inez) remembered us. She came over to our table after the set they were doing and Jimmie got a picture with her. When she had to leave, she took my hands and made little kissy motions in my general direction. Nice. :) When the band started their set again, she thanked us for coming back again. Yay. They just seem to get better each time we see them. Solid playing all around. The bass player had a solo in one of the funky songs and it was fantastic. After we closed the lounge again (the Coral Reef), we headed back to the car. We found a much better place to park that didn't involve about a kilometer of walking. We shared the elevator up to the garage with the guitar player. Very cool guy. I got my picture with him in the elevator. I don't know what it'll look like full-sized, but in the little display screen of my camera I look like a dork. :P
On the drive back to the hotel to get some sleep, we were stopped right in the front of a line of cars by the Mirage. Earlier in the day, we had seen a flatbed truck drive by with a movie/tv show shooting the SUV that was on the back of the flatbed "driving" down the Strip. At three in the morning, they had blocked off both directions of Las Vegas Boulevard and were setting up a shot for what looked like a movie. We eventually got to see a mini come speeding out of the driveway with a showgirl either driving it or in it, with her long feathered headdress streaming out the sunroof. Because of how the shot was being done, the mini sped out, then had to stop dead because of all the "traffic" blocking its way. They were setting up the shot again when they decided to let the real traffic through and we didn't get to see it. Don't know if the pictures of that turned out. We'll have to see when we get home.
When we got back to the room, Jimmie fell asleep fairly quickly and I tried to install AOL on my laptop. It gave me too many problems though, so I ended up going to bed myself within an hour of Jimmie.

Day Two - The first full day in Vegas...
I was awake by 8am. After tossing and turning for 45 more minutes. I decided to get up to write this journal. Jimmie slept until noon. :) After showers all around, we decide to walk to the Walgreens (pharmacy) to buy a street map (and some shaving cream and Dove unscented - couldn't find the soap and my shaving cream has a broken lid), then back to the parking garage at the El Cortez to get the car. Just on the way back, we were witness to two separate "living room" type dramas. One guy telling his woman to "listen you stupid cunt, I said we're doing it and that's final," and some woman named Sherry being told to fuck off from across the street by what I can only assume was a now ex-friend.
We go to the Stratosphere, planning on taking the High Roller (the world's highest roller coaster) and whatever else we could see. The trip up the elevator (which cost 9 bucks) underscored just how slow the elevator is in our hotel. The trip up to the top of the tower took only seconds and popped our ears. The view from the observation area was fantastic. Just as we got there, the people on the X-Scream ride (where they strap you into seats, then hang you over the edge of the tower) came into view. That'd be quite the rush. The looks on some of their faces were great. We tour around the top, then decide to take the High Roller. I can honestly say that I was on the roller coaster. I couldn't stay on it though. The safety bar thingie that comes down over your head and locks into place over your chest wouldn't click into place for me. I was too thick. I watched Jimmie take the ride and apart from it being so high up, it didn't look all that exciting, just a few loops around the top of the building. After the ride, we buy a couple of really expensive drinks (quite possibly the most expensive pop I've ever had - even then it was mostly ice) and hang out at the top for some time just looking at things. Jimmie uses one of the telescopes to check out the signs on the Strip and wants to check out the Frontier tonight as there'll be mud wrestling. Hehehe... I'm still feeling super-tired and hungry (we hadn't eaten yet), so we head back to our neck of the woods. We walk over to the Golden Spike (cheap pie place) and go into the diner there. While I'm getting a couple of dogs for myself, Jimmie goes and gets himself this 40oz glass of beer for two bucks. This thing is frigging huge! When we're sitting there, this guy comes up to us and starts talking to us. Asks us where we're from and when we say, "Canada," he waves it off and says, "So you're American then." He sits at a table just over from us and after he eats his jello (he seemed to have a craving... he had about 3 or 4 of them in the time we were there), he continues to talk to us. He asks about the job situation and what the pay is like in Canada. Before we even say anything, he says, "I'm not Mexican, I'm Hawaiian." Hmmm... don't know about that. He sure looked Mexican to me. :) Then he tells us, "I have skills. I'm a really hard worker. The best." "Well, not the best, but good." Sorry buddy, Canada's not hiring. We leave and I wave aloha to our new amigo. Hehehe...
A short nap at the hotel (for me anyway, Jimmie was reading the journal so far), then we get our asses back to the Mandalay Bay for the Yes concert. We meet this older guy with long hair, shades and more than one missing tooth in the elevator. He asks what we're doing there and as we're saying, "We're here for the..." He shouts out, "YES!!!!" "Where's your seats? No no no, don't tell me, show me." Jimmie pulls out the envelope and the guy grabs it. He holds it in his hands and says, pointing to one end, "This is the stage. Where are you?" We could have said anything, 'cause he said before we really got our point across, "Yeah, those are good seats." After we exit the elevator, he speeds off to the concert. I mean, fast. Jimmie thought he looked a lot like the guy from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "This is bat country."
We get to our seats just mere minutes before the concert starts. Our seats, unlike the speedy guy in the elevator said, aren't that good. There's a railing just in front of us, blocking part of our view. There's a lot of empty seats up in the nosebleed area where we were, so we just shifted around until we found the best of the lot. I really should have brought my Yes CD with us on the trip so we could have been familiar with some of the songs. For a bunch of guys in their late fifties, they really rocked. Jimmie taps me on the shoulder and says to me, "I think that chick is a lesbian." It took me awhile to figure out that he meant the lead singer, JOHN Anderson. Hehehe... When Jimmie went out to the bar to get himself a drink, he witnessed a guy having an epileptic seizure. Yeah, all the flashing lights and loud noise - not a good mix. From our now more great seats, we had quite the view of the entire audience. Right at the front center, there was this huge steroid king who kept jumping up and pumping his massive (I mean MASSIVE) arm in the air.
During the band's "tea break" Jimmie went for a pee break. He was the youngest guy in the washroom and jumped the queue for the urinals and hopped into a stall and used the toilet for the longest pee ever. There were guys arguing about esoteric Yes trivia that Jimmie had no idea about. There was a guy in there trying to sell his ticket near the front. The concert was half over and he was trying to sell his ticket... he really needs to go back to marketing school. When Jimmie left the bathroom, the guy that he would have been standing behind was still standing there and looked like he was going to be there for some time yet.
The second half of the concert started off a little more cozy. They got out from behind their big instruments and sat on chairs at the front of the stage, using only acoustic guitars, simple drum set and a piano. Very nice. After a reworked version of Roundabout, they reset the stage and started to rock. There was a "duel" between the guy on the keyboards and the lead guitarist. There was this massive drum/percussion number that was very neat. They ended the concert with a nice mellow, relaxing song.
Jimmie and I are heading back to the car to see if we can catch the last of the mud wrestling at the Frontier and Joy Ride is playing at the lounge again. At this point, we'd already missed most of the wrestling, so we go into the lounge and sit along the wall. We see that sketchy old guy from the elevator there (he must have nearly ran there to beat us to the lounge) and Jimmie goes up and talks to him on the way to the bar. He's still sketchy and a bit paranoid. When the band finishes their set and go on break, he jumps up and bolts off. :) I talk to the female singer and ask her about that No Doubt song she sang last night. They had just done it before we got there, but she said they'd try to work it in to the end of their next set. Geez, but she's hot. I go to the bar to find Jimmie, and he's there talking to Steroid King. Turns out this guy was sitting two seats away from "that lesbian's" wife, and has for the last three concerts that he's gone to. He's a major fan of Yes... and steroids. We look around the tables close to the dance floor and see one that has just this one guy sitting alone at it with what looked like his bill on the table. Jimmie approaches him and we end up sitting with him. He's this older guy (early 50's) named John from New Orleans that likes to watch the dancers. Speaking of dancers, there were quite a few of them up on the dance floor. Some of them looked like they were very well trained. One lady that Jimmie talked to said that she's been here since 1978 and comes to this lounge because it has the best salsa dancing in town.
We stay for the rest of the show, closing the lounge for the second night running. Jimmie and John drank and smoked and drank and smoked and drank and smoked and I had a pop, then a cranberry juice. After the band packed up and John staggered off to his room, leaving the last of his pack of Dunhills for Jimmie, the female singer came over to our table and talked to us for a bit. Her name is Inez. Jimmie used his, "I've got a secret crush on you" line and she said, "not so secret anymore." She seemed like a genuinely nice person and we talked to her for a few minutes. I'd have to say, the pants she wore tonight and the shirt she wore last night would have been a great combination. I'm not saying that she didn't look hot just the same.
Jimmie ate his third olive of the night (which amounted to 1/4 of his entire solid food intake for the day) and we left in search of the car. It didn't help that we used the wrong elevator to go up to the parking garage. When we were wandering around (both of us at this point wished that we had used the washroom beforehand), we met this young couple (he was horny, she was hungry) also lost and searching for their red car. We met them again on the other level of the parking lot. Finally found found the car. It didn't look the right color because of how dirty it was. Jimmie stowed his stolen wine glass in the trunk then we headed for the Frontier.
The Frontier at 4 in the morning was dead. Literally. The only thing it was missing was a tumbleweed going through the casino. We saw maybe two people playing and the staff just standing around. Whoo Hoo! Let's party. I get my dollar coin and play some slots for a bit, using up about 5 bucks in nickels. On the way out of the Frontier we take advantage of two massage chairs. One buck for about 2 minutes of ecstasy. We decide to go get some breakfast and drive back to the El Cortez and park. We wander around the El Cortez for some time trying to find the coffee shop that I know is in there somewhere. Compared to the Frontier, the El Cortez was packed. Several of the gaming tables were in in action and many people at the slots. We tried to see if Eric was playing there (he flew in today sometime), but found the coffee shop instead. They had a graveyard shift special going on until 5am. Just in time. Two eggs any way, 2 slices of toast, hash browns and 2 pieces of bacon all for 99 cents. There was also two large pancakes and bacon for a buck 50. We both get both. (Thank you Lolita from the Philippines and Connie from Oklahoma) Jimmie wimps out near of the of his plate of eggs and bacon and I eat all of the pancakes. It was so good. The bacon was the best tasting bacon I've had in years.
When we left the El Cortez to cross the street to our hotel, the sky was already starting to lighten in the east. Within minutes of arriving in our not-so-smelly (anymore - at least to our sense of smell) hotel room, we both crashed. I woke up several times during the night and noted that Jimmie did not move at all. At ALL. He might have been dead, but I was too tired to check.

The drive down and Day One...

I can't really start this without talking about some of the stuff that happened in the previous day that led up to the long drive down to Vegas.
I worked the night shift the Saturday night to Sunday morning, then came home and slept for a few hours. When I got up, I finished Mario's computer, then went over to his place to set it up and install his wireless networking. When I left there, I went over to Jimmie's place and picked him up. We went over to his parents' house to get some luggage that he could use for the trip. While there, it came out that he didn't have his birth certificate or a passport. That could get tricky getting across the border. You could tell that he was a bit down in the dumps at this point. His mom said that she would check their safety deposit box the next day and give me a call if she found anything (she didn't). After I dropped him back off at his place to pack, I went back home to pick up Lynette's computer and brought it over to her place so I could finish setting it up there. I didn't leave there until around midnight. Back over to Jimmie's to pick up his suitcases of clothes. Geez! He packs like a girl. A change of clothes for every day that he going to be there. Hehehe... Back home around 2am to start work on Allice's cropping and resizing of her boobie pictures so that she can show her surgeon the healing process. I'm dying by 2:30am so I crash. In the morning, I make up a spiffy checklist for the stuff I need to bring to Vegas. That chews up too much of my remaining, very valuable time. I get back to work on Allice's pictures. In order to get them to her, I decide to make them into a quick and dirty website. That way, she can just giver her surgeon the web address and not have to worry about bringing him a disk, etc. Then I still have to pack... Jimmie calls a couple times during the day. With the second call, we decide that it'd be better if he catches the skytrain to Braid station and I'll just pick him up there. This is awesome because it gives me an extra 30 minutes. I pack all my clothes (even some dirty ones that I didn't get a chance to wash - they'll have to be done in Vegas), pack the car, go to the bank to deposit all of my vacation fund and take out 300 US, go to Superstore to deposit the $200 I made the day before from Mario and Lynette, get the last of my hygiene supplies, then go pick up Jimmie at Braid station. Sounds simple. It could have been. They're doing construction at Superstore, so half of the parking lot is roped off. Their gas station had gas on for 79.9, so there was a long line-up of cars that was barely moving - the line I was in btw. I finally get in to Superstore and when I'm at the cash, the guy in front of me decides to count out his pennies. Even the cashier looked ready to throttle him. I leave Superstore to go get Jimmie. Literally, it should only be a two minute drive. About 10 minutes in, I still hadn't made it to the first set of traffic lights. I try to call Jimmie on his cell phone, but he's talking to someone else so it goes straight to his voice mail. Almost 10 minutes later I'm driving by the small pickup truck that had an engine fire and subsequently had blocked off an entire lane of traffic (during rush hour build-up time) with its melted front end and the firetruck that came to put it out. I don't get to pick up Jimmie until almost quarter to 5, then we head for the border.
We stop at a Chevron before the border so I can buy my Super7 tickets. Hey, it's 35 million. While we're there, we see this awesome Rand McNally road atlas for Canada and the US. It's a bit pricey, but we get it anyway. I used to have one before and they're great. We go over the border at the truck crossing, following the travel plan I printed out from Mapquest. The border guard asked up for proof of citizenship and didn't really give us a hard time about Jimmie not having his birth certificate. He just said that he'll need to get one before coming down again. What we did have a hard time with was getting the guard to shut up about Vegas and where we should go and what we should do. Seems like he had a great time the last time he went. :) Smile and nod, smile and nod. Humor him until you're across the line.
Washington state goes on forever. Especially if you're going diagonal across it like the travel plans called for. We gas up in Yakima (where they're known for their apple harvest - according to the gas attendant that Jimmie was talking to while I was in the can) and get some Arby's (where the roast beef is delicious! Hehehe). We keep following our plan and drive into Oregon, where we're going to cut the corner off the state and head into Idaho (Boise area) before turning south. Right on the Oregon/Idaho border is a city/town called Ontario. We had just under a quarter of a tank left so we stop at this gas station/truck stop. This time when we're talking to the gas attendant, she tells us that the Mapquest driving guides are next to useless and take you way out of your way. She shows us a more straightforward way to get to Vegas on our spiffy road atlas. When she sees out atlas, she mentions offhand that they sell them at the truck stop for 5 bucks. Hmmm... even with the exchange rate, 5 bucks US doesn't equal 17 Canadian. We got ripped off. We go in and walk around the store. It's huge in there. I see a wireless ethernet card for sale and there's an internet plan you can sign up for to get online at any of these hot points. Cool. That's got to be perfect for truckers that want to stay in touch with their friends and family. The map book turns out to be 10 bucks, which doesn't sting as much, but has a $5 mail-in rebate. The sting is back. They had just taken some giant apple fritters out of whatever they fry apple fritters in and were selling them for 2 for a buck. We couldn't pass that up. The other person working in the store confirmed the new route to Vegas and shows it to us on the map. She says it's about 620 miles from there to Vegas. The other one pipes up something about taking about 6 hours. Yeah, if we drive 103 miles an hour. :) This is a good thing all this redundant showing on the map though, as both Jimmie and I are getting a bit punchy from the long drive and lack of sleep. I haven't let Jimmie drive yet because he had even less sleep than I did before we left.
We follow the new route, which takes us into Idaho for a bit so that we can link up with the highway going south. Back into Oregon and the long straight roads going south. Jimmie sees an even shorter, more direct way than Lewis and Clark in Ontario showed us, so we take that. About 3 hours out of Vegas I have to pull over to walk around a bit. Jimmie isn't doing his job of keeping me alert and awake by talking to me. He's been sleeping off and on since Ontario. I'll give him credit though, he doesn't snore too loudly. We pulled in to this roadhouse thing and go in. Jimmie uses the can while I look at the menu. Nothing really appeals to me except for the can of Rockstar! I saw in the cooler. I got a can (3 bucks!) and we leave. We were getting a little too many stares from Cletus and Buford. Might have been Jimmie's stylish shades, or me in my shorts, Hawaiian shirt and sandals. One of the jeeps in the parking lot even had a cow skull roped to the front of it. Yeah, hello. I let Jimmie drive because I'm just not feeling up to it. My gut was starting to complain from the diet pills and the inadvertent double-dosing I was giving myself due to the sinus pills (which contain pseudoephedrine) I was taking to keep my sinus headache at bay. I hold off on the energy drink so that I can try to get some sleep. Jimmie looks a bit nervous in the driver seat. :) It had been awhile since he'd driven any car, let alone one with the power and weight of one like mine. Hehehe... the roads were pretty much straight lines, not like those endless, twisty mountain roads in Oregon, so I wasn't nervous and was able to catch almost 30 minutes of shut down time. So much more relaxing in the passenger seat, not having to have the precise focus needed for the distance drives. I got another 10 or 15 minutes of sleep(ish) before we pulled in to this gas station to get gas on the outskirts of Death Valley. Walking was fun. It made me remember why I prefer to drive when I'm in my car. I hadn't been able to move my left leg for pretty much the entire time I was on that side and when it came time to walk on it, it felt like someone had knee-capped me. I decide to take over driving again because I was feeling refreshed and didn't want to go through the whole knee thing again. We check the map again and add up the distances and we're only about an hour and a half out of Vegas. By using the new and improved route, we successfully shaved between 3 and 6 hours off our arrival time if we would have stuck to the Mapquest route. Bah! Good thing to know for the future.
We drive into Vegas and due to some construction, it's a bit difficult to figure out how to get to our hotel from the highway. We break out the Mapquest printouts again for the address and follow the directions on getting there. As we're pulling in to the Bellagio, it occurs to me that I put in that address when I was getting the travel route and not Ogden House (where we were staying), a substantially less extravagant accommodation. This was ok though. It afforded us an opportunity to travel down the Strip and see all the big casinos in the daylight. I knew roughly where Ogden House was from my previous time in Vegas when Eric pointed it out to me and that was waaaaay at the other end of the Strip, and then some. We drive around and pretty much drive right to it. Kinda. Parking was a bit confusing at first, but we get it sorted. Mark pulls in to a parking lot behind the Ogden building (5 stories) We weren't sure that this was the right spot to store his vehical while trekking around old Vegas, so I stayed with the car. Hot - I stared at Mark as he walked around the corner and then to the ball of fire in the sky... 'I need sunscreen.' I hear some yelling off to the right - I look... I see a gorgeous woman standing at the end of the lot. She was wearing just a white t-shirt. (doing laundry ~ outside?) The yelling came from a man standing the floor right above her. " Are you done? When are you coming back? I need to talk to you. " he stated as he walked from his room to the suite next to him as he did a homie handshake with his fist to the brother standing at the door. I glance back at the woman. She's getting ready to go up ~ Then it occurred to me that this was like the Hastings of Vegas ~ I was thankful to know that when Mark came back, we were in the wrong spot. We ended driving onto 7th; past Ogden and pulled into a garage 'not a parkade.' We parked 3 stories up next to the elevator that brought us to the El Cortez back entrance. Our hotel was across the street. We come in to register and they don't have any more non-smoking rooms left despite the fact that I had reserved one. We go up to our room and it smells like my Nanny's apartment used to smell. Fortunately, our sense of smell deadens pretty quickly and turning the air conditioner on high helped. We stow our gear and take a little tour of the neighbourhood. We walk into the El Cortez across the street and as the cigarette smoke assaults me I think of two things. The Great Canadian Casino rocks for being non-smoking and that it really doesn't matter that we don't have a non-smoking room, we're going to smell like it anyway. We witness one of the Fremont Street Experience light shows and aren't overwhelmed. The computer controlling it is a bit screwed and there were glitches in the display. We go to the place where I used to get the pieces of pie for a buck and it's gone up to a buck 50. Oh well, still a cheap piece of pie. We have supper at this Mexican restaurant that turns out to be rather pricey. It would have even been pricey in Canadian bucks. We share an entree, which was probably a good thing. Both of us weren't all that hungry after eating the pie. Back to the hotel room to get the car keys and my sinus pills, then we drove to the end of the Strip, the Mandalay Bay, to buy our tickets for the Yes concert and to walk around. It's a beautiful casino. The smell of cigarette smoke doesn't hang as heavily in the air. From there, we go to the Excalibur and the Luxor, then cross the street to New York, New York, the Tropicana and the MGM Grand. I started my collection of dollar coins from the casinos we go to. In Excalibur, the one I got from one machine was a bit crappy, so I tried putting it back into a video poker machine to see if I could cash out and get a new coin. Yeah, that didn't work, I had to play my dollar. I lucked out though and hit a 10 to 1 payout and got 10 coins to choose from. :) We stayed at the Mandalay Bay until 2:30 in the morning listening to a live band (Joy Ride) in the lounge. We found a nice place to rest our feet from all the street hiking we've done. It was located to the far left, where I was able to see a boob shot from this bra-less beauty. Her shirt was being constantly fondled and pulled up by the hound she was dancing with. 'I love those mental snapshots.' unfortunately Mark didn't have the luxury of capturing the moment like I did. Although he was smiling for a different reason. He was being entertained by the haggard air guitar guy, who was first with the oriental girl, then with the woman in the black dress - all smiles. Jester was putting on a good show... I noticed that the drinks he had drank started to take control, leading him in this foolish dance; taking him off the dance floor and over to the sculpted rock beside us. Looked like he was done, even though the song wasn't. Finished with a bow not because he was waiting for an applause but for the room to stop spinning. They did cover tunes of lots of different bands and styles (not only that, the female singer was muy caliente!). Pretty good, but by the end of it both of us were starting to really feel the exhaustion. Driving back to the hotel was a nice, relaxing drive. Well, most of it anyway. There was the left hand turning traffic light that didn't go green for three cycles of the lights. We ended up going right and pulling a U-turn (just like all the taxis) to drive back down the Strip. After getting all of our shit together, we were in bed by 3am. Bam! Out like lights.